Dark Rivers of the Heart

within me. I'm in a state beyond mere terror No word is adequate for what I feel. I'm at the black door, touching the black door, so black, glo., like a moonless night sky reflected in the blindface of a pond. I'm nearly as confused as I am terrified, for it seems to me that I'm, both eight and fourteen, that I'm opening the door to save not merely the woman who made bloody birds on the vestibule door but to save my mother as well.
        Time past and time present melt together, and all iv one, and I enter the slaughterhouse.
        I step into dense black lightaround me. The ceiling is ink-black to match the walls, the walls to match the floor the floor like a chute to Hell. A naked woman, half conscious, lips split and bleeding, rolling her head in listless denial, is manacled to a burnished-steel slab, which seems to float in blackness because its supports also are black. A single light. Directly over the table. In a black fixture.
        It floats in the void, pin-spotting the steel, like a celestial object or the cruel beam of a godlike inquisitor My father's wearing black.
        Only his face and hands are visible, as if severed but alive in their own right, as if he is an apparition struggling toward completion.
        He's extracting a gleaming hypodermic syringe from thin air-actually from a drawer beneath the steel slab, a drawer invisible in its blackness-upon-blackness.
        I shout, "No, no, no, " as I plunge at him, surprising him, so the syringe drops back into the thin air-from which it came, and I drive him backwards, backwards, past the table, out of the focused light, into blackest infinity, until we crash into the wall at the end of the universe. I'm screaming, punching, but I'm fourteen and slender, and he's in his prime, muscular powerful. I kick him, but I'm barefoot.
        He lifts me effortlessly, turns with me, floating in space, slams me backfirst into the hard blackness, knocking the wind out of me, slams me again. Pain along my spine. Another blackness rises inside me, deeper than the abyss all ice around. But the woman cries out again, and her voice helps me resist the inner darkness, even if I can't resist my father's far greater strength.
        Then he presses me to the wall with his body, holding me off the floor with his hands, his face looming before mine, locks of black hairfalling across his forehead, eyes so dark that they seem to be holes through which I'm seeing the blackness behind him. "Don't be afraid, don't, don't be afraid, boy. Baby boy, I won't harm you.
        You're my blood, my seed, my creation, my baby. I'll never hurt you.
        Okay? You understand? You hear me, son, sweet boy, my sweet little Mikey, you hear me? I'm glad you're here. It had to happen sooner or later Sooner the better. Sweet boy, my boy. I know why you're here, I know why you've come." I'm dazed and disoriented because of the perfect blackness of that room, because of the horrors in the catacombs, because of being lifted bodily and pounded against the wall.
        In my condition, his voice is as lulling as fearsome, strangely seductive, and I'm nearly convinced he won't harm me.
        Somehow I must have misunderstood the things I've seen. He continues speaking in that hypnotic way, words pouring out, giving me no chance to think, Jesus my mind spinning, him pressing me to the wall, face like a great moon over me.
        "I know why you've come. I know what you are. I know why you're here.
        You're my blood, my seed, my son, no different from me than my reflection in a mirror Do you hear me, Mikey, sweet baby boy, hear me?
        I know what you are, why you've come, why you're here, what you need.
        "What you need. I know, I know. You know it too. You knew it when you came through the door and saw her on the table, saw her breasts, vau, between her spread legs. You knew, oh, yes, oh you knew, you wanted it, you knew, you kneu, what you wanted, what you need, what you are.
        And it's all right, Mikey, it's all right, baby boy. It's all right what you are, what I am. It's how we were born, each of us, it what we were meant to be.
        Then we're standing at the table, and I'm not sure how we got there, the only thing in front of me and in view is my father pressing against my back, pinning me to the table. He has a vicious grip on my right wrist, pushes my hand onto her breasts, slides it along her naked body.
        She's